I would also like to recommend a very old British movie, made during WWII. It is called "Mrs. Minever" and stars Greer Garson. A family in an English village suffers through the war; the husband takes his boat and evacuates soldiers at Dunkirk, they are perpetually in black-out due to bombing raids, and at the end their very old church is bombed. Through it all they keep a stiff upper lip and press on, trying to maintain the traditions of village life. The ending is all of them standing and singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" in the ruined church. Very inspirational, and I highly recommend it. Mrs. Miniver is the movie that everyone notes when asking why Wizard of Oz didn't win Best Picture. I saw Miniver for the first time last Oscar season, when one of the classic movie cable nets played a Best Picture winner every night. Oz is a timeless children's tale (at least the movie version), whereas Miniver was a product of the times, when it was very much in doubt whether the West as we knew it would survive Nazism. The only people who could fail to be moved by that ending are the heartless and those who think that because everything turned out fine, it was needlessly propagandish and manipulative -- as if movies like, say, Philadelphia weren't also.
It would take a tragedy of proportions that make 9/11 seem small to make a movie like Mrs. Miniver possible today.
Mrs. Minever was a movie I watched again right after 9/11. Hollywood could have done such a wonderful thing for this nation by making movies that inspired and encouraged us in the war. They could have made movies about the Special Forces guys riding to battle on horseback in Afghanistan, the courage of the passengers who saved the Pentagon, the story of the firemen and policemen in New York, etc. They could have made fictional movies about people caught in Iraq, spies in Washington, etc.
Instead, they made a whiney movie about the rescued female soldier and that was it. Ibelieve they also have some anti-war movies coming out this summer.
I believe I will watch Mrs. Minever again. It is more relevant than anything coming out of Hollywood today.